Iron Sky sequel The Coming Race reached the crowd funding goal of $150000 yesterday, after a 55-day crowd funding campaign on IndieGoGo. I must admit I was a bit worried at many points, but we managed to prove again and again that the fans are out there, willing to help and support, and that there’s a lot of love for Iron Sky out there.

The campaign started out in Cannes 2013 this year with a simple plea video shot by Blind Spot team, starring me as a North Korean prisoner. We thought we’ll have some fun with the recent North Korean threats, and knew that producing a “lo-fi” -style video would be possible, although at that point we had zero budget to begin with. The plea video turned out quite fun, I was a bit nervous if it would work but am happy to see that at least people didn’t hate it.

The campaign started off nicely, but then died quite quickly because — well, we are almost first-timers on this, platform-based crowd funding. First, we were a bit baffled on what happened, why did the great beginning died out so abruptly, but realized soon enough that you actually need to work for every dollar. You need to be re-inventing yourself every two days to keep the campaign running; whether it’s a new perk, a cool new way to promote, a new video, piece of graphic… there needs to be something new every day.

You also need to communicate with the supporters. Updating them via IndieGoGo is crucial, but also doing the legwork in Facebook – updating the main fanbase at Iron Sky Facebook Page is important, but you don’t want to go all the way spammy there. Not everyone wants to join. So we created a specific Iron Sky The Coming Race Crowd Funding -page on Facebook, which is a zone merely devoted to updating and discussing the crowd funding campaign.

Yet, our original time limit, 47 days, wasn’t enough. We ended up with little over $10000, but then in came IndieGoGo, offering us an extension of 10 days, which we gratefully took. The suggested time for a campaign on IGG is 60 days, especially with bigger productions – we should’ve taken the heed from the beginning, but it’s good IndieGoGo was out there to help us out.

Altogether, working with IndieGoGo was a pleasure. The idea was originally brought up by someone at IndieGoGo, and our case was handed over to John Trigonis of IndieGoGo who did amazing work helping us out whenever we needed, and giving us advice along the way.

The campaign wasn’t an easy one, and not everyone believed in it. We did hear from several critics and bloggers some grumbling along the way, but we have learned that it’s part of the game when you do something that’s against the norm. Some were also surprised of the “slow” pace of the campaign, being all blinded by the Hollywood-backed crowd funding campaign successes of Veronica Mars andZach Braff, but it’s good to remember that although Iron Sky is no son of yesterday’s grouse when it comes to Internet, it’s still a small fish in a big pond, and the Hollywood stardom still gets the biggest splashes, and we smaller players just have to soldier on. But we made it, and we can be proud of what we achieved.

With the extremely hard 60-days work, help of IndieGoGo — and the enthusiasm of our fans, first and foremost — we were able to reach the goal of $150000. But the game is not over yet. We still have some 50 hours left in the campaign, and we are hoping to push the sum to as high as possible.

I will be writing a detailed “guidebook” to crowd funding here in Iron Sky blog based on our experiences, hoping to share what we learned along the way, and hoping to spark up some more interesting crowd funding campaigns and help those in process of one. I’ll also do a Reddit AMA now to answer some questions.

There’s a lot of people to thank to for the success, but just to name few, I want to thank first and foremost Essi Suomela, my companion and co-conspirator in the campaign, who with I pushed through the campaign high and lows. Another huge thanks goes to producer Tero Kaukomaa who initiated the whole campaign and stood firm on our side. And of course Samuli Torssonen and Jarmo Puskala, without whom we would’ve botched the whole campaign before it was even born. But then, one of the most important part was our amazing team at Blind Spot Pictures; Iiris Juutilainen, Emma Ilves and the rest of the wonderful people there, who still have a huge work ahead of them to tie the loose ends of the campaign.

For the last 50 days we’ve been busting our asses off working on Iron Sky sequel’s development funding through a crowd funding platform IndieGoGo. The road has been rather interesting, and even for the most die-hard fan it’s a bit hard to follow everything we’ve released, so I thought gathering it all up here in one place for easy way in!

The launch logo of the film, revealed to be titled Iron Sky The Coming Race

Iron Sky The Coming Race logo

(Logo by Timo Vuorensola)

Here’s the first campaign video, the “North Korean hostage video” with director Timo Vuorensola’s plea to the audience.

And here’s the first press release:

IRON SKY SEQUEL IN THE WORKS – AIMS FOR BIG CROWDFUNDING
“From the ruins of mankind, a new breed of superiority shall arise!”

The filmmakers behind the internationally successful scifi comedy IRON SKY are following up the insane storyline of Nazis on the Dark Side of the Moon by launching the crowdfunding effort for the sequel, titled IRON SKY THE COMING RACE.

So far, Iron Sky is the most successfully crowdfunded film in the world that has been released, raising $1,5 million from the crowd. The total budget of the film was $10 million. The aim with the sequel is to crush the crowdfunding records with help from its growing community for the scifi spectacle.

“Because Iron Sky had its genesis online and our funding model rose from those origins, people assumed we would follow an alternative distribution route, but we in fact raised other monies that put us on a more traditional path. Whilst it was great to work with distributors around the world who loved the project, with the sequel we want to return to our roots and see what new paths we can forge in online and alternative distribution.”, says producer Tero Kaukomaa. “When the new film comes out, we want it to be available for anyone, everywhere around the world and on whatever platform you prefer to watch it. Our goal is not to be dependant on any entity but our fans.”

The first goal is to raise money for the development phase to produce the script and a promo reel for the film, and a production plan. The crowdfunding takes place in Indiegogo; link.

The details of the story for Iron Sky sequel are still to be disclosed, and the team is keeping a tight lid on the production so far. The original writing team is currently laying out the beats of the story.

Iron Sky sequel will be shot earliest in 2015. “We are not in a hurry, we want to make this one the best, most amazing science fiction film out there,” Vuorensola adds.

“Because of the nature of the film, we want to start early enough building the community and funding the film,” producer Kaukomaa says. “We aim to redefine the possibilities of crowdfunding as an effort for distribution model against piracy and believe that our experience, fanbase and concept can carry us all the way there.”

The first phase of IRON SKY THE COMING RACE crowdfunding launches today, with a rather politically incorrect plea video, as seen here: www.igg.me/at/thecomingrace

The first promo poster, with the Vril Symbol:

(Artwork by Timo Vuorensola and Bastien Grivet)

The first Director’s Update, from Cannes Film Festival:

A Thank You -postcard with the reveal of the tagline of the film (“From the Ashes of Mankind, a New Breed of Superiority Shall Arise”).

The film makers of science fiction action comedy Iron Sky, released 2012 in Berlin Film Festival and followed by a worldwide success, are now working on the sequel. The first casting news promise the return of Udo Kier (who played the Moon Führer) and Stephanie Paul (who played the President of the United States).

Both actors have released their own campaign videos in support of Iron Sky sequel.

Although not much of the story has been released, the first visual released online hints of the storyline related to the Hollow Earth mythology.

See the visual here: http://i.imgur.com/AW8wsG9.jpg

The music for the film will be composed by a legendary Slovenian music group Laibach, who also composed the soundtrack for the first Iron Sky.

The film production is still in early stages, and filmmakers are now raising money to produce the script and first promo of the film, using IndieGoGo –platform. The campaign has so far raised almost $90000 and remaining days hope to get the funding up to $100000.

The complete budget of the film including viral communication is estimated to be somewhere around $15 million, with production starting earliest 2015.

And here’s the awesome campaign plea video “A Message from the President of United States to North Korea” from Madame President, Stephanie Paul:

And Wolfgang Kortzfleisch’s plea, by Udo Kier himself!

And then comes the third Director’s Update, this time from Croatia (or Center of the Earth, if you please):

To celebrate the 10 days extension by IndieGoGo, we released this campaign poster:

We are now at $130000, with under $20k to go, and full six days to make it work. Head over to our IndieGoGo campaign and share the link www.igg.me/at/thecomingrace – your continuing support is the key to the success of the campaign.

Thank you so much for these 50 days, we are at the very last leg of this long journey and are about to reach our goal, of which we have you – and *only* you – to thank for.

The trailer for Iron Sky: Director’s Cut has been released. Featuring a new, Germanised vesion of Laibach/Siddharta classic B-Machine as a background, this trailer showcases the 20 new minutes injected in Iron Sky.

As the campaign is marching through its’ last leg, with 9 more days to go and over $60000 already in the bag of the first crowd funding campaign, we’ve just released the first artwork for the sequel Iron Sky The Coming Race. Here it is:

The whole campaign has been extremely interesting learning experience as well, and I know I promised to give a good, thorough walk-through of crowd funding using a crowd funding platform back in 2011 when we were doing The Race, but never got around doing that. But this time, I actually have a lot to say about the experience, and will share it in a blog post after the campaign is over.

If you haven’t still supported the production, there’s still time, just head over to our IndieGoGo page and put in your support. If you still wonder the amount, $60 is a pretty good deal. Here’s what you get with: